Tolerance cannot be measured in terms of degrees of intolerance. I am essentially opposed to burning books even when they incite others to violence. But freedom is either an absolute or it is conditioned on not inciting others to violence. Anything else is rationalized bigotry.

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Thursday, October 30, 2014

Arab Violence and Palestinian Identity

On the 22nd
of October 2014 an East Jerusalem Arab drove his car into a group of people
waiting for the Jerusalem
light rail service. Two people, a baby and a new immigrant subsequently died as
a result of this act of terror. It happened as violence has all but prevented
the service from connecting the two halves of the city, effectively re-dividing
Jerusalem for
the first time since 1967.At the same
time, riots on the Temple
Mount put a stop to visits
by Jews or anyone else interested in visiting Judaism’s holiest site.

One of Judaism’s
greatest innovations was for worship to become an intellectual exercise and not
an act that was dependent on geography, physical artifact or structure.Nevertheless, power has always demanded of
its rulers an imposing physical space as demonstration of their commanding
presence.It is as if we are unable to emotionally
detach ourselves completely from the Golden Calf.And this applies to most of the world’s
faiths today and all of them, at some time in their history. If we recognize
this condition as a statement of a human need for physical reassurance then we
can also understand both the war waged against us and part of the response that
is required from us.

Throughout Israel a conflict
over identity is being fought. As distance between Israel’s
founding fathers (and mothers) widens, Arabs born in Israel are becoming more Israeli
and less Arab. This is a good thing because successful integration in any
society is based on a shared identity which may take a single generation to
achieve or even two or three generations if there is opposition to this
integration.

An ethnic identity
is the only thing that keeps Israel’s
Arab citizens ‘Palestinian,’ and even that is a lie because Arab identity is
postulated on a trans-national ‘universalist’ ethnic indivisibility.

A national identity
is tribal and to the fundamentalist Muslim, un-Islamic. In the mythology of the
Arab founding narrative Muhammad chose the Arabs for his religious revelation
and not the ethnic inhabitants of one geographically limited area.It may be resented by non-Arab Muslims but it
is impossible to deny the influence it has had over Near-Eastern politics and
ethnic insecurity.

It explains the
ethnic bigotry of some of Israel’s
Arab members of parliament. It explains the reason why Arabs who renounce this
racist faux-legal construct of third generation Israeli-Palestinian identity
are violently opposed by professional Palestinian agitators and anti-Zionists.
The recent case of a teenager forced to flee for his life from his kith and kin
occurred solely because of his public announcement that he was an Israeli
Muslim.The viciousness of the Arab
reaction is indicative of the threat felt by racists who fear for the fight over
what constitutes a legitimate identity. They fear that this fight may be taken into
their home territory.

That ‘brave’ 17
year-old teenage boy (as referred to immediately above) is a relative of the
anti-Zionist MK (Member of Knesset) Hanin
Zoabi. What is remarkable is that she appears to have committed an act of
criminal incitement when she justified the kidnapping of three Israeli
seminarians who were almost immediately thereafter murdered.Her public denunciation of her young
relative was on first reflection mild compared to her public justification for
kidnapping. She derided him as “from a divorced family. His mother now lives in
Nazareth Illit, where he studies at a Jewish school. He's sleazy. He's
distorted his identity."

That
Hanin Zoabi MK does not now languish in prison is a display of monumental cowardice
by Israel’s
parliamentary and judicial leadership.This case clearly demonstrates the fascism that is intrinsic to the
Palestinian cause. So the question is - how do we fight this war?

If according to the current
narrative a Jew cannot be a Palestinian, then conversely, a Palestinian
identity is invalidated by adoption of a Jewish or Israeli identity.

Many
years ago Yasser Arafat famously dismissed the suggestion that a Jewish
missionary effort might help to resolve the conflict between the two sides by
threatening to flood Israel with millions of Palestinians who would ‘convert’
to Judaism in order to take advantage of Israel’s Law of Return.He was bluffing of course. Proselytes away
from Islam are tortured and then murdered in the Arab world. Again it is viewed
as an act of ethnic betrayal.Identity
politics is the Arab way to bully the rest of us into adopting a defensive
position. In our post-modern Western world we reject specific national
identities as countering a harmonious inter-ethnic existence.But we permit it to our minorities if they
are vocal enough and violent enough in their opposition to us.

The
issue of resolving Palestine – Israel is
therefore also hampered by ultra-orthodox control over religious identity.Mass conversion would be impossible to contemplate
and would take centuries to actuate.

Just
as Christians, Muslims and Druze are able to settle almost anywhere in Israel, the
reverse must similarly apply.It is mainly
Arab apartheid that actively prevents Jews settling amongst Arabs.Jewish missionary activity would break down
this brick wall of opposition to Arab integration in Israel
and it would help to marginalize Israel’s
racist opponents both in Israel
and in the West by exposing the real nature of their opposition to Jewish
self-determination.The media must be
encouraged to openly debate this Arab particularistic opposition and yes, it
would expose Jewish insecurities about their own religious identity as well as
the issues that ultra-orthodox authority have created within Israeli society
(as well as internationally).Removing
religious coercion would focus religious competition – identity has always been
a competition for “souls.”

How
to respond to the inevitable riots against integration? Counter them by
building thousands of housing units for demobilized soldiers in every town that
threatens violence.

Within
Israel,
the twin actions of encouraging an Israeli identity amongst Arabs and
prosecuting those people who threaten this freedom to choose their identity would
force everyone to consider their racist positions and to reconcile those
positions within a democratic and Western orientated Jewish State.It would lower the heat in Israel’s
parliament because passionate positions on intra-Israeli identity are not based
on inclusion and as such discourage equality and kinship within society.

And
last, it would go some way towards resolving the Palestine-Israel conflict
because without a Palestinian base “in-country” there would be no support in Israel, by
Arabs, for a Palestinian “Return.”Supporters of the Palestinian Right of Return in Europe and the Americas could
only then reconcile their support through antisemitic argument that would be
obvious to everyone.